“I wish you didn’t have to go,” I whispered. I stood and brushed off my hands, then closed the umbrella to bask in it a little longer … though I quickly realized the umbrella was there for a reason. I’d be soaked through if I wasn’t carefu—

I yelped as something solid and cold hit my shoulder, scattering snow like an explosion that got some in my eye.

“Hey!” My scowl turned into a smile as I watched Saba laughing at the end of the hall. “What was that?”

I wiped the water off my eyelashes and looked down at my shoulder, a splotch of snow sticking where it had hit me. I dusted it off quickly, before it seeped through my sweater. Saba bent over and gathered more snow, pressing it into a ball between her hands. I gaped, realizing what she was doing, and barely had time to dodge as she threw it at me. I slipped and fell onto my bottom, giggling like a little kid.

“Oh, you’ve done it now.”

I pressed together my own ball of snow, using the umbrella as a shield to block Saba’s attack, but mine was small and ineffective, Saba barely needing to move to get away from it. I threw the umbrella away to gather more snow, but I’d never be able to move or block in time to—

Snow hit Saba in the chest and she grinned wildly beyond me. It suddenly occurred to me how similar her smile was to—

“Magnus!” I felt myself beaming as he bent beside me to gather more snow. I dropped my gaze to the snow at the last second. “I’m not wearing my amulet.”

“I’d say the odds are a bit more even this way, wouldn’t you?” Magnus pressed his snowball tightly in his bare hands. “And that’s okay, keep your eyes on the prize.”

“Beating Saba?” I held up my arms in front of my face just in time to block Saba’s attack.

“Not in the face!” Magnus threw his snowball in my defense. “We can’t just put ours back together, you know.”

Saba stuck out her tongue at us, and I slipped to my feet, laughing. “Get ready to lose, Saba!”

And with that, it was all-out war. My hands were numb, my hair and sweater coated with snow, but I didn’t care. This was the most I’d laughed in—

“What the devil is going on?”

Peggy’s voice made me jolt around, slipping before I gained my footing.

“Have you lost your mind?” she said, glaring at me as if I truly had. “Why are you throwing snow around?”

“She started it,” Magnus and I said together, pointing at where Saba had been—she certainly had a way of disappearing at all the right moments to avoid Peggy. And maybe Magnus thought so too, because we both laughed.